Seed Lists and mutual advice swap

[Roland Deschain]

Once i've finished the garden, although it'll be before the seedlings are planted out, i'll take some photos. My parents have a large number of different shrubs and trees around the edges, and they're all at their best at this time of year. Some still need to flower, but that'll come in time.

The weeds will be heavily suppressed with bark chips. Very heavily suppressed. Any that survive through that will meet my Dutch Hoe (aka a Hee).

[Opsa]

Oh dear, I'm afraid I'm anti-mulch.

Around here people go nuts with mulch, pour it in small mountains around their young trees and tend to kill them with it.

[Roland Deschain]

I'm not the person who would actively contribute to a plant's death by mulch, as I know how to use it properly. I hope, lol. The area directly around plants will be kept relatively free, whilst the blank areas will have a decent amount on it, thereby suppressing weeds where the sun shines, and not suppressing them where it doesn't. If that makes any sense.

[Opsa]

It does. You know how to use mulch properly.

I think that the mulch abusers are just lazy. They want to get on their yee-haw riding mowers and mow the heck out of their laws, and lots of mulch keeps them from running things over. I don't think they are thinking about protect the plants from anything other than their power-tool zealousness.

[Aggie]

I'm playing around with mulch this year, but what mulch spells for me is SOIL IMPROVEMENT.  BIOMASS! is my current war-cry.

I got my hands on as much of I want of a large round bale (i.e. several hundred pounds or more... possibly upwards of half-a-ton) of mouldy horse-hay, and building compost with it.  I hauled home a couple of hundred pounds (estimate) of burdock greens from a yard I was cleaning up on Monday, and am alternating the two.

As an alternative to alternating, I'm also playing around with spreading the hay on the lawn and then cutting it, so the hay and grass are chopped up together.  Seems like a good way to make quick compost, and a mulch that might break down relatively quickly in-situ.

[Opsa]

You'll have to keep an eye out for the hayseeds, though, and I don't mean the rednecks!

I'm all for composting.

[Aggie]

Alfalfa and grass are no worse than the bedevilled bindweed.   The weed-seed bank in my soil is already incredible, what are a few more seeds going to do?

[Opsa]

Maybe they'll cancel eachother out! The bindweed is terrible here this year.

[Roland Deschain]

I'm playing around with mulch this year, but what mulch spells for me is SOIL IMPROVEMENT.  BIOMASS! is my current war-cry.

I have an imagine of you running across a garden carrying a pitchfork and a hoe, covered from head to toe in weld, madder, and wode, crying "This is BIOMASS!!!!!" You appear to be a little like a green-fingered Boudica.

I've cut down an entire Pampass Grass, which has rather filled an entire compost bin. I have another to cut down, but the other compost bin is 3/4 full, and the garden waste bins (emptied by the local council every 2 weeks) are also full, one with the dwarf conifer I cut down (it grew 8-10' (240-300cm) tall, I kid you not!), the other with other items i've surreptitiously trimmed from the garden.

I am also now addicted to Gardener's World. Again.

[Aggie]

I'm playing around with mulch this year, but what mulch spells for me is SOIL IMPROVEMENT.  BIOMASS! is my current war-cry.

I have an imagine of you running across a garden carrying a pitchfork and a hoe, covered from head to toe in weld, madder, and wode, crying "This is BIOMASS!!!!!" You appear to be a little like a green-fingered Boudica.

Sickle (usugama) and machete, plus a gas trimmer, are my biomass collecting tools.   Head to toe coverage in weed and grass fragments is certainly applicable.

[Opsa]

You guys are gardening warriors!

Today I was a sniper in the war against weeds. I picked 'em off here and there. But they keep on coming!

[Roland Deschain]

Sickle (usugama) and machete, plus a gas trimmer, are my biomass collecting tools.

Lol! That's a kick-buttock version.

Head to toe coverage in weed and grass fragments is certainly applicable.

You guys are gardening warriors!

You mean like the attached photo?

[Opsa]

Ut-oh... looks like the weeds are winning over that fellow!

[Roland Deschain]

Ut-oh... looks like the weeds are winning over that fellow!

I think he looks rather fetching like that. He cuts a fine figure when clean, though.

[Aggie]

Sickle (usugama) and machete, plus a gas trimmer, are my biomass collecting tools.

Lol! That's a kick-buttock version.

Kick burdock, even! My big black machete works better on 2nd year burdock stalks than the trimmer does.

The compost pile (grass mulched with hay, also uncut hay with chopped burdock greens) is humming along and hot, hot, hot!  I turned it; the bottom bits needed some air and were smelling ammoniacal. There's probably a bit too much nitrogen to carbon, but constant flipping should help with that. I also dug out a bit of a compost-grotto in the front of the pile to give more airflow to the bottom bits. I'm starting to believe the old stories about getting compost in weeks rather than months or years.